


Reprisal's Benefaction

by TheHatterTheory



Series: Nothing Is Sacred [8]
Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Battle, Character Death, Complete, F/M, Gen, I REGRET NOTHING, Oneshot, Other, Salvation, Stand Alone, fight, waaaaaagnst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHatterTheory/pseuds/TheHatterTheory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am a cancer that has swallowed disease to make myself stronger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reprisal's Benefaction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaye](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Kaye).



Reprisal's Benefaction

By: The Hatter Theory

Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Inu Yasha

A Note: Character death. For Kaye, who asked for something from Shippou's POV.

* * *

I am nothing if not patient.

When you first lay eyes on me again, there is no recognition. I am not offended. It has been three hundred years, and you have no reason to remember me. It is not me that I want you to remember. Your eyes are old, wizened. Even if you appear to be another human in your prime, much as I, we recognize each other for what we are. You are among the oldest, the elite. You are a whispered legend still used to terrify children and warn travelers and warriors alike.

I am a simple wraith in the shadows. I am not known, nor have I ever felt the need to be. Unlike you, I never hungered for power or conquest. My ambitions are much more humble, much more personal.

It takes centuries to understand a legend and how to destroy it.

But I am nothing if not patient.

Though we are not human, though we both remain outside of the natural order of time and karma, there is no kinship. You cannot find it in anyone, and even if you could, I would not want it.

It does not stop me from slipping into the thriving business you have created. You say nothing. After all, I am simple and weak. I am merely trying to get by. I ask for nothing, no favors or respect. I do not seek recognition or even status. It is easier to hide the truth when eyes slide over you. Simple adjustments create the strongest illusions. Because you think me simple you do not see my cunning, because you think me desperate you do not see my strength.

For months we have passed each other by, and in those moments I am a nonentity, but I don't mind.

I have waited countless years, each minute that passes once my plan is set into motion is _nothing_.

Patience is my virtue, a learned one, a commanded one. It is foreign to my kind and our wily natures. But anything can be learned, as I have found. As you will soon understand. Patience. Cunning. Magic.

Hatred.

I am as sleek a weapon as ever could have been created. Every cell of my being is devoted to obliteration. Even your now useless sword would not compare to my ability, honed on a wheel of fury and loss for three hundred years.

I am a cancer that has swallowed disease to make myself stronger.

And now, as I stare down at you, my magic tightening around you, coiling until you are shackled and helpless despite your fury, you still do not recognize me. But it has never been about me. There is no karma for youkai, there is no divine punishment or reincarnation, no coming back. We are all spirits given solid form, and when we die there is nothing.

I make sure that as I enact retribution, and I become judge and ultimately, executioner, that you understand who this was about.

I whisper her name and your eyes widen, immediately recognition sets in, but not of me. There is a shadow there, in the deepness of your wisdom, a pain. And I savor it, draw it out. Because while others did not understand her sobbing pleas, I did. I waited, as she waited, for you to save her.

I was patient.

I am still patient.

I draw it out, I watch your suffering, and the anguish I evoke is only the beginning. I want you to hurt. I want you to cry tears of blood.

Even when my magics are pulsing in my hands and I am gripping your skull, feeling the damage I wreak, you fight me. Your anguish turns to fury. Humans have machines for what I am doing to you. Humans have used similar techniques to kill their worst offenders. But you will not die. Not yet.

The tears begin. They are not sorrow, or pain. They are the body's natural response to extended torture. You are a statue in a church crying blood and I am pulling you down from your pedestal.

I expected you to break free. I expected you to fight me.

But you will not win.

I will blaspheme the legend and I will obliterate your existence.

Each blow is a burst of light in my vision. Your poison is acid but it is nothing compared to the bitter medicine I have taken every day since she died. My blood mixes with sweat and I can't tell the difference between them. I do not falter, the pain is only a suggestion of itself. Her face is firmly entrenched in my mind, her cries for you. Her last breath raspy, broken syllables of your name.

I have been patient.

I have waited in the shadows, I have learned everything to become as effective a predator as you ever were. I have swallowed the darkness and become what the shadows fear.

It does not matter that we are leveling a city.

It does not matter that we are both on the verge of breaking.

It does not matter that this is taking longer than I thought.

I am patient.

When we are both only bloody, grotesque parodies of ourselves, I go for the kill.

As do you.

It was not unexpected. I did, in some way, hope for it.

There is nothing to live for once this is finished. And even as I am finished, my task is complete. We stumble, only feet away from one another when we fall. I am content. The darkness within me cradles a seed of light, and knowing that only nothingness waits, I bathe in that small ray of light. Her blue eyes, her warm smile. Her light is pain and salvation. Her purity lived beyond the earthly form and it is destroying me.

"I once loved a human woman."

It is a whisper so quiet even I almost miss it.

"Kagome."

We are dying. And the last word that leaves your lips, a strangled gurgle, is her name. It is eerily similar to the moment I watched her die, your name a scraped, raw exhalation of longing and regret.

Maybe I have done us both a favor.

"Mother."

She was our last breath.


End file.
